28 April, 2016

The All-Stars are the most recent gang I've painted for AtDE (summer 2015), and the last for now as I have painted enough miniatures for the game and am ready to move on to other projects for a while. I'll still be playing though, and do have one more completed faction I haven't taken pictures of yet.

The All-Stars are a group of well-known characters from television and movies that I put together for fun. I bought them from Studio Miniatures in the UK in early 2015. They shipped them quickly and the castings are of excellent quality with minimal flash or mold lines. They have a lot of other miniatures available, grouped into 'Zombies' and 'Survivors'. The 'Survivors' are a mix of generic and recognizable characters. They have added quite a few since I ordered mine. They were great to paint with a lot of nice details.

15 April, 2016

The Sisters of Acquisition are another of the gangs from the Across the Dead Earth rulebook (a post-apocalypse skirmish game set in Britain). The miniatures are from the publishers (Dead Earth Games). These are by a different sculptor than their other gangs and are unfortunately out of scale to their other releases. They are so thin that to my eyes there is little sculpted detail, and I felt like I was painting most of the detail on myself.

Despite their drawbacks, I painted them in early 2015. They may no longer be available and are not on the Dead Earth storefront. Thankfully their other releases have been of much higher quality!

The whole gang. From left to right, Lady Cara (Scout), Sister Sledgehammer (Assault/Scrapper), Bloody Mary (Leader), Penny (Medic) & One-Eyed Susan (Sharpshooter). The knife in Penny's right hand broke off while I was removing flash/mold lines, so I made a new, larger one out of green stuff. Lady Cara resembles a certain tomb raider. You can click on the pictures for a closer look.

04 April, 2016

After painting multiple armies for Saga, I decided I needed some 25mm Dark Age buildings in my collection. Enter Acheson Creations. They produce a large range of resin buildings and terrain for various periods. These are all from their Medieval Range. They have a good amount of detail, are easy to paint, and to top it off are inexpensive. I've listed the current prices below, but they were even cheaper when I bought them several years ago. I painted them in 2014, at the same time as the Acheson bridge I posted pictures of in October 2014.

The 4 buildings in this post all have removable roofs. I don't remember if all of their Dark Age buildings have them, but I like being able to place miniatures inside.

The first step was preparing the buildings. I ran them through the dishwasher (gentle cycle, top rack) to remove any mold release agent. Then I spray-painted them black. Next I used a brush to paint black any spots that didn't get covered sufficiently.

On the left is the Timbered Saxon House ($16); on the right is the Thatched Wattle and Mud House ($15). For the Saxon House, I drybushed the entire building twice with Vallejo German Camo Medium Brown, then did a lighter drybrush with Howard Hues Colonial Khaki on the wood areas. For the thatch, after the brown, I drybrushed Ral Partha/Iron Wind Dun, then Musket Miniatures New Thatch. I had bought that color years before but never used it until this project. It is fitting that I finally used it for thatched roofs.

For the Thatched Wattle and Mud House, the wattled areas got a medium brown drybrush. I painted the rest with several thin coats of Howard Hues Colonial Khaki, then a drybrush of off-white. The thatch was done as described above.

I'm not sure which building this is as not all of the Acheson buildings have pictures on their website. It was painted using the same techniques as the previous buildings, with the addition of drybrushing the stone foundation and steps with Ceramcoat Charcoal Grey, Ceramcoat Storm Grey and Vallejo Game Color Cold Grey. This building has one difference to the others; it does not have an interior floor. It doesn't impact gameplay though.

Last is the Viking Log Longhouse ($14.50). I modified this one using an idea from my friend Mike Demana, terrain builder extraordinare. He has many cool projects on his blog at http://leadlegionaries.blogspot.com/

I added dragon heads to the ends of the crossbeams on each side of the hall. I bought a 'Toob' of plastic dragons at Hobby Lobby, picked out 4 I liked, then cut the heads off. I used a pin vice to drill holes in the base of each head and in each beam. I used brass wire and superglue to attach the heads to the beams, then painted everything as described for the previous buildings. I think the dragon heads add a lot of character to the building and give it a Viking feel.